It's been sooooo long since I did my last entry!!!!

I have loads of excuses and several genuine reasons for not getting my thoughts down. Chief amongst them must be the sad news that my father-in-law Dennis passed away in early December and, what with Christmas and everything etc etc...... Nuff said, bad times.

So, where do I pick up the thread?  The last entry discussed the RADARS Traditional Radio Rally which is always enjoyed by all (including those who attended but who ought to wash more often ...).On the strength of our dwindling Club funds we are going to do it again but this time in the summer!! A Rochdale Radio rally but with shorts on! This time its branded as a Summer Flea Market and Junk Sale. I just hope there's more junk on sale than fleas... Make a date in your diary for Saturday May 12th,  kick off at 10.30am.. £2.50 to get in... No charge to get out.

Going back to the thread of the life story, I can pick things up just past the endless Saturday afternoons down at the back of the TV shop with Dad and Ray and journey onwards to sixth form and my first 'real' job prior to leaving Birmingham and going off to college.

I'll need to explain in a little more depth a few points that stick out in my mind as needing to be got off my chest before progress can be made though....

Generally, sad to say but with hindsight, I wasn't a very happy chappie throughout my childhood. Although there were certainly some happy times, most of my memories tend to dwell on the negative rather than the positive. I can certainly say that my love of radio definitely pulled me through some really scary times. As I've mentioned before, I look back and wish that my Dad had taken more interest in my radio pastime and of course Grandad Thomas McGuire was in Ireland and not exactly down the road to go and ask advice.

I was a very nervous kid. Very timid and deemed 'shy' by most of the family. I had failed my 11 Plus exam, so was henceforth at this time labelled 'a bit thick' (a smidgen of racism here pointed at my Irish heritage fuelled this!) and went 'up' to the catholic Secondary Modern School attached to my primary school.... The wonderful Rosary RC School  where the Sisters of Charity and Marist Brothers dominated the staff and the pupils alike.  The catholic religion has a lot to answer for and no, I wasn't abused aka the recent scandals.... er, unless you call being beaten with the cane several times??  This wasn't just if you did something out of line and perhaps 'deserved it' but we were beaten on a daily basis, in lessons, for not getting spelings rite or youre sums rong. It left an impression not just on my receiving hands but deep down too... Unfortunately this was the norm in those days and we are only talking about the middle 1960s?? Just what a kid like I was at that time really needed to nurture and boost confidence... Add a generous amount of bullying and the ridicule of my classmates for the occasional public weeping episode (well, the cane DID hurt!) and you can imagine my state of mind as a 10 to 13 yr old?? I sensed that the key to my poor relationship with my Dad at this time was no doubt as a result of his failure to relate to a son who wasn't a 'lad' in the traditional sense. I was a loner, quiet, no good at sport, emotional and cried a lot.

The change came when I was put in for the '13 Plus' exam. Birmingham Education Authority were at the forefront of the demise of the 11 Plus and instituted a second chance arrangement for any budding 11 Plus failures who fell foul of circumstances beyond their control and who were misplaced in secondary modern school. Credit to my Mum here as she found out about this and approached the school to get me entered. If she hadn't poked her nose into this it might have never happened for me and, well, this story would be very different. Together with a couple other mums (and dad's I suppose) pressure was applied at the school and a group of us were entered for the new exam. 

I remember the day the application forms were given out in my class to me and a chap called Paul. Funnily enough we got on well and sat together in lessons. We were like minded and similar in that he was very good at art, quiet like me and also couldn't play football. Again, not a 'lad' in the accepted sense of that era in working class Saltley. The event sticks out in my mind due to attitude of the teacher dishing out the forms... Mrs Czepiel (pronounced 'shepezel')...  just dumped them on our desk, looking down her nose and sneering  'Not a chance!' to both of us. Again, wonderful confidence boosting practise.

Suffice to say that Paul passed the exam and went to Moseley Art School and I passed and went to Bordesley Green Boys Technical School. I think my life really started at this point and the changes came on rapidly.  I went up in my Dad's estimation, I suddenly had a fresh start with a load of boys so had to shape up, so to speak, quickly learning from past mistakes and not repeating them. 

Looking back it was a bit of a duck to water situation. My confidence grew, my reputation grew and I started to think I was worth it.

The first day kicked off this instant progression in a peculiar way. The first lesson of the day following Registration and Tutor Group was P.E..  I trotted out from the changing rooms barefooted and chested as decreed by the rules, or so I thought, and proceeded to run around doing warm ups with all my new classmates. Unknown to me the shorts were meant to be worn commando style. At the shrill of his whistle the 'master', a Mr Lunn, stopped everyone in their tracks and singled me out as the only one flagrantly flouting the rules with the damning evidence of visible underpants  slipping out from beneath the shorts....  In full view of everyone I was made to strip naked, removing the offending underwear and correcting my breach of the rules.....

Now as first days at a new school go this was pretty traumatic but in another way it earned me a great deal of respect from all the other boys present. This wasn't due to my perfectly formed and obviously impressive physical endowments but due to my new classmates' universal sense of fairness and justice. Mr Lunn was a hated figure, an obviously warped old git. The rest of my classmates rallied to my situation. I was instantly became one of them, part of the gang. So indirectly Mr Lunn helped me enormously to fit in quickly and settle into my new situation. I'm proud to say that one friend, Pete Ward, is still a true and dear friend to this day some 40+ years later....

The technical nature of the curriculum was brilliant and suddenly I became known to be  'good' at things...Well, except French and Maths but neither have held me back in later life! (As a side comment, amongst several, I gained 'O' Levels in Physics, Technical Drawing and Metalwork which I think proves that my thinking is very connected to things of purpose rather than abstract  symbolism... So what if X + Y = a banana... Who cares? ) I even got good at football scoring six goals in one game... It was nice to not be one of the last men picked when teams needed picking for a change!

I carried on at the TV shop with Dad and Ray until football, ie Birmingham City FC, took over my Saturday afternoons. I hardly missed a home game from 1968'ish till I went to college in 1973. Freddie Goodwin, Bob Latchford and  Trevor Francis, jumpers for goalposts... ah, those were the days.... 

The pressure of school work and hormones took their toll over the next few years but radio still featured in my life even if it was reduced to Tony Blackburn in the mornings and Johnny Walker whilst doing my homework... But then again we did have Jenson's Dimensions and the fledgling John Peel, not to mention The Old Grey Whistle Test on TV. Needless to say these programmes were listened to mainly in my bedroom on an old HMV 1126 and I still lay awake into the early hours listening to Luxembourg 208 and the North Sea International and, of course, Radio Caroline... And Short Wave was still a daily twiddle of the tuning knob just to see if anything interesting popped up....

My first proper job came along in the summer of 73 just before leaving for teacher training college. Having finished my 'A' levels in June I had until late September to find work and hopefully gather some funds to help sustain me through the summer and help boost my grant... In those days tertiary education was free and we got a maintenance grant to live on. This grant was boosted by money from Mom and Dad so any extra I could get would help ease their burden a little.

Enter stage right Mr Sothers of C.A Sothers (Electrical) Ltd of Soho Birmingham.   I duly turned up at Washwood Heath Labour Exchange and was sent to Bromford Bridge Petrol Terminal and told to ask for  'Bob' the site foreman for C.A Sothers Ltd who were engaged on a job there on behalf of Shell. I found him down a hole, he hired me.  So started a long relationship with the small Brummie electrical company which sustained me from the summer of 1973 right through to Easter 1976 in that they employed me every vacation from college throughout my studies.

Thanks to Mr Sothers, the owner, I managed to earn more in 'real terms' than perhaps I ever have since! He took me on every holiday, including Christmas and Easter, as a casual worker. As a student I didn't pay tax or much national Insurance. Weekends and overtime was always available and when we worked out of town we got a generous subsistence allowance and travel allowance.  In the days before electronic payments I enjoyed a brown envelope every Friday which was stuffed with money, or at least it felt that way! I remember taking home one Friday £115 which in the early 70's was equivalent to maybe ten times that today!.. Well, petrol was 30p a gallon and a pint of beer about 20p???   I think he was a real gent and I think he took me on because in some way he wanted to 'do good' and give someone a helping hand on the ladder of life.  Many thanks to him...

The Christmas and Easter holidays were usually confined to boring stock taking and over the course of three years I must have counted and recorded every tool, length of cable and all the electrical fittings appertaining to the industry they possessed at least twice. The summers were a different matter. Given the extended time available, July to October, I was able to get stuck in on a variety of sites all over the Midlands and ultimately the infamous summer of 75 down in the east end of London. I was even once given my own 'job' in charge of two slightly younger apprentices to dig out and re-cable some fire proof cabling for a large pumping station over at a petrol storage depot in Bilston.  We did the job in three days and were richly rewarded!! In the next blog I will reveal the details of the summer with Sothers down in the east end of London sandwiched between the Avon perfume factory and the abattoir... It was certainly a smell that lingered....

The Trouble with Blogs... And the Great Rochdale Radio Rally

Hmm...  The trouble with doing a Blog is, as much as I do like writing my ramblings, it's one of those things where you have to be 1) in the right frame of mind to write and 2) have the time to write ... And of course both criterion have to be synchronised to happen at the same time!

So, a feeble excuse for not keeping the Blog up to date and flowing... I'll try harder!

The provocation for putting finger to computer key tonight comes from the impetus of our wonderful Rochdale Traditional Radio Rally which was held last Saturday (12th) down at a local church hall.  The radio club, of which I am a member... RADARS...(Rochdale and District Amateur Radio Society)... Has been going for around twenty years and I have to take the blame for getting it off the ground way back then with Brian (Where are you Brian??). 

I admit that I don't attend Club meetings that regularly these days but I'm still pretty active within the Club in terms of organising the said Rally each year and also by raising much needed funds via donations of equipment to the Club on eBay and such like. Often people approach us and donate equipment as a sad result of the death of a fellow radio ham.. A 'Silent Key'... We then dispose of the stuff either for the family concerned or for Club funds.

This year we seem to have had a spate of Silent Key disposals, a sorry state of affairs perhaps implying the truth that none of us old hams are getting any younger.... The average age of the hobby is pretty old and, according to the Radio Society of Great Britain, membership is dwindling. So, a dying hobby? In the face of the Internet, satellite communications and mobile phones, its probably no wonder that youngsters have turned to other perhaps more exciting means of communication and seem to have lost the joys that I think can be found within a scientific and experimental hobby???

The above comments brings me back to the Rally last Saturday and perhaps the real reason why Ham Radio isn't seen as an attractive proposition in the 21st century.... I've mentioned it before in an earlier Blog but, basically, the average Radio Ham is just a little bit wierd, probably on the autistic spectrum somewhere, talks in technobabble and wears odd clothes and maybe doesn't wash as often as most people...... Yes, we brought to the world geeks and nerds! Marconi was a geek!! Baird was a nerd!!

The pictures featured on this Blog are snapshots of the Rally on Saturday which visually convey what we all looked like. Sadly they don't convey the smell... You'll have to imagine that. The characters I mentioned before, the short sighted guy with the magnifying glass, the chap with long silver hair wearing shorts and with a dog in tow, the very very urine smelling git from St Helen's.... They were all there! (Except the short wearing guy had long trousers and no dog... I hope the dog's okay and not now a late dog, a gone to The Choir Eternal dog???  We had a new one too. A chap who came up from London by train carrying a large, heavy ham radio to sell on the Bring and Buy!  Actually I do admire his effort and he did sell it! (To a very keen new young recruit... Yes, We FOUND ONE!.... Well done Eamonn!! That rig will last you years!!) 

Today I have voted in favour of the attempt by the RSGB to try and take a bit of time out from the normal constitutional organisation of the governing body to enable a new approach in the running and effectiveness of the society and hence to try and bring it up into the 21st Century and shake off its 'old farts' image. I sincerely hope it works out but I do have my doubts. The new managing group (supposing they are elected) whilst being willing to give things a try, are still mainly old blokes who are 60+ and have also been around for a few years already. Leopards and spots springs to mind??? The jury is out and I wish them well.... Only time will tell, but an article in this months RSGB RADCOM magazine which described the recent RSGB Convention as a 'success'  whilst at the same time talking of the shopping trip organised for the ladies (the 'XYL's in ham radio speak) to occupy them whilst their hubby's got to grips with radio stuff,  just highlights how out of touch with the modern world the RSGB is!! I won't mention the call for the evening meal dress code as 'lounge suits' (I think I just did!!) which also portrays an out of date very conservative, with a small C, outlook. Constant talk in RADCOM of things like working with the Guides and Scouts (interesting organisations but in my experience very middle class and out of touch with modern youth), the endless debates about morse or no morse, the ramblings about poor operating practice but with no real solution proffered with any bite which would snuff it out, the constant debate about the licencing structure and the merits or not of having such 'easy' access to the airwaves,  etc. etc.,  just point to an outdated and 'unreal world' approach.... I took a look at some of my old RADCOMs from the last 20 years or so (Yes, I keep them. It's a nerd trait!) and if you look at the Letters page at the back of the magazine, the topics covered are remarkably similar year in year out... We are stuck in a time warp!  It's as if the world of ham radio was still in the 1940's and 50's, which of course it is!!

So, now I've got all that off my chest.... I promised some time back to spend a little time describing some of my early traumatic experiences as a small child and teenager back at No 42 and what now I can describe as a pretty unhappy childhood. A bit Dark Side but it needs recording. I will do this in my next blog and also continue with the family saga which has caused some interest with the present family who didn't know about a lot of the things I'd mentioned and explained. This has been useful in that it kind of sets out a family history which will hopefully be of use in the future when distant recollections might get lost in the fog of time.... And I really must mention my time with C.A. Sothers (Electrical) Ltd where I spent nearly 15 months working (not in one go!) as a 'Sparky's Mate' and survived!

A Small Interlude..... Dabhandradio goes 'funny'...

Just a quick addition to my Blog and an apology for the long time lag since the blog has last had an entry! We've been so busy both at work and at home due to my father-in-law's continued difficulties which we have been addressing... Poor old guy (at 91!) is currently in hospital and we have been on the visiting and sorting trail for the last three weeks...  Happily he is on the mend and moving up to Bury, near us, to be closer.. 

Anyway, the story concerning the comedy show!!

Sanderson Jones is a comedian whose style is to personally sell all the tickets for his gigs. At the same time he makes a note of each person he sells a ticket to and tries to incorporate something about them into his routine on stage... Jon, my son, bought a ticket and Sanderson tracked me down through my son's Twitter site.  Sanderson in turn found this Blog and Dabhandradio, and phoned me earlier this week to see if I could contribute in some way to his comedy event in Islington on Friday 14th October... The show Jon was attending.

Having a warped sense of humour myself (!) I obliged by sending Sanderson a few photos of Jon, a few anecdotes about his childhood and a video message... I'm sorry but the video message is just a little naughty and says something embarrassing about ...well, I'd better not say!!

The evening went well... Jon was totally surprised and gob smacked at seeing me on camera on stage! The humour skillfully guided by Sanderson brought the house down in laughter.

Thanks Jon, for not being mortally offended!!    More regular blog to follow soon.. I promise!

The One and Two Valve Degenerative Radio....

Throughout my teens I experimented with a variety of radio projects most of which worked a little until the smoke got out.... As all electronics enthusiasts know, the components used in all home brew stuff contains magic smoke that makes them work. When this smoke is released that's when they will stop working. Luckily no real damage was done to the house in Hartopp Road but I can remember several close shaves.

We only had a small garden but when I was around 14 or so we got our first shed which meant most of my experimental projects could be tested in there before bringing them into the house. I shared the shed with Dad who at that time had moved on to work at the Morris Commercial car factory at Adderley Park. This was the place that some of the final Post Office Morris Minor vans and Morris Travellers were made which meant that Dad filled the shed with various liberated parts, fixtures and fittings which might prove to be 'useful' some rainy day. This meant also that most of my radio projects had surplus car wiring looms, had chassis painted Post Office red, and nearly all started from a 12 volt automotive source of power.

The shed became a sanctuary, for me and for Dad, and many many happy hours were spent there. Its funny how today I still spend many hours in my workshop and as I write this I realise that those seeds of pleasant solitude and calm 'thinking time' which were sown all those years ago have grown and still play an essential part of my life.

One notable memory of the shed was the fact that it seemed to be pretty indestructible. It lasted for years and years and was robust enough to be dismantled and re-erected in the garden of the first house me and my wife bought in Cheslyn Hay, Staffordshire in the late 1970's. I put this down to Dad's careful forward thinking strategy of painting it when new in several coats of aluminium paint, inside and out, followed by topcoats of British Racing Green. All the paint had been kindly donated to him from the British car industry. I can still see it now gleaming in the evening sun in its silver splendour prior to its first coat of green.... I wonder if it is still standing today? I'd bet it is.

It was around this time that my support of Birmingham City FC started to really get a hold and Dad, Ray and myself became a threesome who took in as many games as we could. This of course was just a natural progression for me having been totally indoctrinated by Dad and Granddad Shaw into the fact that being a Blues fan is in the blood, as my son Jon also knows today! I seldom missed a home game from around 1966 right up to 1973 when I went away to college near Blackpool at Poulton Le Fylde and then I saw them play at as many of the northern grounds within striking distance as possible. The Latchford and Francis years... Pure joy but with many sorrows too!

Most of my radio experiments during those times remained of the sort directed by the amount of scrap Ray could furnish me from the repair shop. Despite Dad having moved on from selling radio and TV in the high street, Ray continued to be a useful tutor and I could still pop into the repair workshop to gather as many parts as I could muster. I continued to make crystal sets just because I was fascinated by the fact I could receive radio signals without using any battery or other power source. I built my first regenerative one valve radio then a two-valve radio along with tweaking several domestic sets to try and boost their reception.  I loved to expose all the parts and see the valves glowing brightly in the dark at night listening to Radio Luxembourg and Caroline. Not too safe but I only got a few shocks now and again! I made a special effort to set the alarm and be awake on the morning that Radio One started up anxious to hear Tony Blackburn launch the station 'live'. I knew it was a significant milestone in broadcasting and I didn't want to miss it.

I made my first Slim Jim aerial for airband reception in order to grab the airport control tower transmissions and also experimented with telephones by rigging up a rudimentary intercom system between the house and the shed. I was still building Airfix models too but now using a variety of British car industry electric motors (I think they were for window washer pumps?!) to power the rotors of the model helicopters I built mounted on platforms made to look like helipads or aircraft carrier decks. Christmas time often produced rich rewards in the shape of Tandy Electronics Kits and one year I managed to get hold of a Sinclair tiny 'matchbox' radio which used the amazing ZN 414 chip which boosted my knowledge of transistors and the like... Much safer than valves but also so bloomin' fickle in that you only had to look at them sideways and they would go pop. I soon learnt that, in my quest to glean volume and power out of transistor amplifiers, you had to be careful with the speaker impedance and polarity. I learnt the lesson the hard way by frying several IC chips in my quest for more volume for the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

The photo on published with this entry reveals that I was certainly the first, only and original Adrian Mole. I was always a shy youngster and very quiet, undemonstrative and I suppose deemed very 'sensitive' by Mum and Dad.. I wasn't much good at any sport, wasn't high flying academically and spent many hours in the shed doing my thing with radio and aircraft modelling interspersed with regular trips to the airport to spot planes. The next entry will be something of a cathartic journey for me as I'm going to reveal a few weird episodes that happened during phases of my childhood and which shaped my future!! Heavy stuff!! But not too heavy so don't worry................. 

The Teenage Years... Plane Spotting and Hartland Point Coastguard Station

Well finally the wonderful summer 'silly season' of holidays is regretfully over and the past month has gone by so fast! .... Hence the time lag in this blog which as of now is resumed or exhumed depending on its entertainment value!

We've been away first to France to relax a little but at the same time help our friends in their valiant work in the restoration of an old French barn.... I was acting as labourer lifting and helping fix up plasterboard and thus the joints have needed a couple of weeks to recover... Then we travelled down to Devon to spend some time with a wonderful lady who was the midwife who helped deliver our Jon (we had a home birth!) and who we have kept in touch with over the past thirty nearly years... She was able to meet up with Jon as he was appearing as Captain Hook in a London Touring Theatre production of Peter Pan this summer making hundreds of small children cry throughout the south of England... 

Now its back to The Workshop and once again I'm trying hard to catch up on Orders for radio restorations and DAB conversions, and loving every minute! I'm so lucky to be able to enjoy my work but I don't want to sound too smug as sometimes even this occupation can be stressful especially when that final 'tweak' of a circuit can result in the smoke escaping from the electronics and rendering the air in The Workshop thick with expletives....

And so to the teenage years.... Well, as already told, much of my time was spent in the TV shop back room with Ray Beels each Saturday afternoon but it was around this time that I also discovered a love of all things aircraft. Much of this came from my dad who at first dragged me along to my first air display on an old Midland Red bus to Tern Hill aerodrome in Shropshire and later to Gaydon, Cosford and Benson. Mostly this was around Battle of Britain celebrations each September with dad taking the time off from work so we could go and soak up the smells, noise and pure joy of watching the aerial spectacle. I remember The Black Arrows and their Hawker Hunter jets and then the Red Arrows ( Yellowjacks?) and the Folland Gnat. Gaydon displays were especially memorable due to the large contingent of V Bombers, Valiants, Victors and Vulcans. Tern Hill was memorable as the place where I was first stung by a wasp and I am and will always be thankful for the input of the RAF Medical Orderly who cured the pain with a packet of Murray Mints! This memory was revived in my speech at my daughter's wedding when welcoming Ian into our family... Ian is now a Squadron Leader in the RAF and has brought the world of aircraft even closer... But more of him later!

With the aircraft spotting came airband radio. During the long school holidays I would take myself off to Birmingham Airport at Elmdon armed with spotting book, banana sandwiches and a flask full of cocoa (still a combination which to this day which I often resort to as 'comfort food' in times of stress!). The airport was only five miles from Hartopp Road and we were privy to being very near to the final approach when aircraft were landing on runway 33 so I also had a good view from my back bedroom window. Its almost unbelievable now, in these days of our reliance on the car for transport but I used to walk to the airport! This saved my pocket money so I could indulge in my other pastime of building Airfix models of all the planes and more that I was spotting. On wet days I might only walk as far as the Coventry Road and then get the 58 bus to the terminus and walk up the the airport from the back route.

Sometimes at weekends we would all go, mum and dad and my baby sister, and have a day out at the airport and a picnic in the public viewing area. Birmingham wasn't anywhere near as busy as it is now with maybe three or four flights a day being a bit of a pile up!! The aircraft of my youth were BEA Dakotas, Viscounts, Vanguards and British Eagle Britannias, KLM DC4's and Aer Lingus Dakotas and Viscounts. Note that there were no jets at first as the runway at Elmdon was too short until extended in the late 1960's... This then opened up a world of BAC 111's and more. I actually got up early one Saturday morning and went to the airport to be there at 8am to witness the first landing of a BOAC Boeing 707 and again at another time to see the first Convair Coronardo. Despite these beauties some of my more favoured aircraft included the twin boomed Noratlas transporters of the then West German and Belgian Airforce and the RAF Argosy's and Short's Belfast. What these miltary transports did at Elmdon I never knew but I bet it was pretty innocent stuff. My absolute favourite has to be the Viscount and the sound of those Dart turboprops... I still get the hairs rise on the back of my neck when the screaming pitch of these wonderful sounding power units seem to drop slightly at the point of taxi... Great stuff and I often look up YouTube and turn the sound up full blast to wallow in a bit of audio nostalgia!

On one Sunday mum and dad treated me to a short 15 minute pleasure flight on an old Dragon Rapide over to Brum city centre and back. I remember it cost a fiver, a lot in those days, and I expect dad would have loved to have gone himself rather than me! As I was rather a serious child and not as emotionally demonstrative as I am now, I can remember discussions in the car going home about me 'not looking as though I enjoyed it'... Well, it might be 45 years or so later but YES!, I did!  Happy Days!!

But back to radio... I soon discovered that other more 'professional' plane spotters were able to listen into the air traffic control communications on small VHF radios and, of course, I had to have one! Father Christmas duly obliged and the world of ATC opened up. I began to learn how to improve the signal via rudimentary amplifiers and antennas so that I could not only listen to Birmingham Control Tower whilst at the airport but at home too. This wasn't too much of a challenge looking back now to those years with my present radio knowledge but way back then this was all new to me and the innocence of the pioneer spirit was strong. I also developed the short wave side of listening on AM with an even longer long wire aerial down the garden to grab the short waves and listen to the VOLMET broadcasts from Shannon and London.  I also have to admit that other frequencies attracted my attention too such as the fire, ambulance and police!! But of course, I didn't listen to those!!

A school trip down to Elmscott in Devon in the summer of 1969 opened up two more areas of experience. The visit was a biology field trip to make transects of the beach to catalogue all the flora and fauna of rock pools and stuff... The real learning experience was teaming up with the sixth form lads and getting hammered on Newcastle Brown Ale. Probably only one, maybe two? This was the first new area of experience of which I still embibe today. The second area was the Coastguard Station at Hartland Point. This truly blew my mind and opened up a whole new world of maritime radio. I was totally impressed by the antenna arrays and all the HF gear... mainly Eddystone radios I recall... and the constant traffic of ship to ship and ship to shore communication. The whole of the western approaches were covered and they had direct links to the eastern seaboard of the USA and Canada, and there was all the rescue coordination stuff plus the RNLI aspects of their work.   Thank you Mr Whetnall (our then teacher and now sitting on his cloud up top somewhere) for organising the trip and tour we had of the station. 

I resolved to make sure that once home I would get to grips with this maritime communications lark and get hold of a really decent Short Wave receiver.  I didn't realise it then but living in the middle of England was going to be a bit of a handicap in trying to listen to ships at sea........

Practical Wireless, or rather Practically Witless...and the weirdos...

Its only fair to say that once gripped by radio and my first experimental crystal sets, the natural progression was to try and harness the power and potential of electricity. The trouble was that valves need lots of volts to make them work, or so I thought, and hence the dangerous game of tapping into mains wiring entered my world...

No 42 had originally been a gas lamp house, built around the 1890's, and all the electrics were of the add on variety. Bakelite switches and lamp holders, two and three pin round plugs and sockets and all the wiring was rubber cloth clad stuff. All pulsing away at 240+ volts and several amps (always remember its the amps that will kill you before the volts get a hold!).  Okay in its early kitten days but pretty lethal once grown up and its teeth had developed, gnawing into all that decrepit insulation.. Fuse blowing, rendering the whole house into darkness, was a pretty regular occurrence at No 42  without having the 12 yr old nerdy geek boffin kid conducting evil and dastardly experiments in the bedroom (and as I led a sheltered life such experiments did not develop once I discovered girls some years later...sadly!!).

A significant development in my early radio education came when Dad left Antiference and got a job as a TV and radio salesman at Broadmeads, a TV and Radio shop,  on the Alum Rock Road.  Dad tended to drift from job to job in his later years but throughout my childhood, no doubt pinned down by his responsibilities, especially once my sister arrived in 1963, he had steady employment and all in the TV/radio trade. For me this meant Saturdays in the back of the shop making tea for the staff, sweeping up and polishing tv and radio cases ready for display. It also meant that I could don a brown labcoat and sit for hour and hours with Ray, the engineer, in the back workshop learning the repair business. This was usually to the background sounds of Eddy Wareing and the rugby or the crash and bangs of the wrestling (which we all thought at the time was 'real' rather than stage fighting!) and the eagerly awaited football results.  It was around this time that Dad had a spare time job collecting for Littlewoods football pools on Friday nights which in turn became my first ever 'job'  when I took the mantle from Dad to earn my first pocket money.


One memory that sticks with me was being sent out during the winter of 1963 in a howling blizzard to do the round.... Not doing the pools during those times wasn't an option so the collector had to go and do the job whatever the weather. I was too young to do the work officially so it was dad who took all the takings down to the office on Washwood Heath Road before the 10.30pm deadline and collect his commission of which I got my cut...Thinking back I reckon Dad was on to a good thing....

Ray Beels was quite an influence on me during those years and even more of an influence on Dad's sister, Val, who he married hence becoming part of the family. I only have one indistinct picture of Ray taken from the programme of a Birmingham City FC match from 19th December 1970 long after both he and Dad had left the TV trade. This allowed Saturday afternoons for our continuing love affair with football.  The picture is posted here today and commemorates that wonderful time at The Blues when Trevor was King.... Oh the nostalgia!  You won't be able to really make out the picture but when actually viewed at close quarters you can distinctly make out Dad's high forehead, Ray's white cloth cap and me wearing the very popular teenage rage at the time of a fur clad hooded parka.  We always stood at the Tilton Road end and always in the same spot. Everyone else had their regular standing places too so each Saturday's home game meant a reunion of sporting pals, people we only ever met on the terraces.  It was at St Andrew's that I first learnt that Dad used the 'F' word and various other expletives and it was also a place where I too was given permission to blaspheme, rant and rage and swear as much as I liked... but only there. We did have standards in those days! 


Ray was a great bloke who also played guitar in a local band who had a residency at Canon Hill Park pavilion on Saturday nights. I can see why Val fell for him as he fitted into the swinging 60's image with all its optimism and excitement. Ray was able to teach me various fixes on  a variety of radio gear and even let me loose with a soldering iron on the simple fixes whilst he helped Dad out front in the shop. Perhaps the biggest boon of this arrangement was the amount of surplus stuff I was allowed to bring home, all of it consigned to the dustbin but saved by me from such a fate.. Or rather ultimately just having a stay of execution whilst I had a play with it. 

My first real bang of an electric shock was from a PYE reel to reel tape recorder which I was trying to fix  at home one evening when, of course, Mum and Dad were out.  It must have been significant as I remember it clearly! I know that electricity moves very very fast but I still swear that when you are about to get a belt you 'know' its going to happen in that split second before it strikes. This was no exception and I can still close my eyes and relive the magnetic pull that I felt as my thumb kind of stuck to the transformer as the volts kicked in up my arm. Luckily I was able to pull myself away and so lived to tell this tale.  Ever since I have had a very healthy respect for mains electricity and hopefully I'll manage to stay clear of harms way until I hang up my soldering iron for the last time. Its quite peculiar to note, coming up to the present time for a brief moment, that since I have started earning my living from the repair and restoration of old valve radios, my current industrial injuries seem to be confined to cutting holes in my hands when using the saw and narrowly escaping blindness at such times when the grinding wheel on the Dremel breaks and flies off into my face... Hmmm, maybe I need to look at my current practice? No shocks for a few years though,  so maybe I'm okay on that score,  or just on borrowed time?


In an attempt to back up my practical experiences with Ray and with Granddad Thomas on my Irish holidays, I started to buy Practical Wireless, then issued every week. This turned out to be a significant drain on my pocket money but I considered it worth it. The trouble was, and remember my limited but rapidly improving reading abilities, I had a great deal of trouble understanding the damn thing! It was largely gobbledygook to me but with enough snippets of sense to keep me interested. Luckily Ray could point me in the right direction and also furnished the necessary bits and bobs needed to turn some of their blueprints into working examples of radio, sort of! 


Even today I find some aspects of the magazine and Radcom, the Radio Society of Great Britain's tome, totally baffling. Things usually begin to make sense as the practical side of things begin to catch up with the theory. Its interesting to note that I often read past issues of both magazines again and this time can understand them. It's like fog clearing.. It must be the way my mind works!



To digress slightly, I reckon that within the world of amateur radio there is a kind of mystical aura surrounding the hobby which does tend to attract some very weird people.... I suppose I have to include myself! If  you have ever been to an amateur radio rally or club you will certainly find some amazing characters.  My present radio club is no exception but I will spare their blushes by not naming names... I do know that several of us also readily acknowledge the presence of the weirdos and enjoy having a bit of a rant form time to time on how it is that such people seem to be attracted to the hobby, usually as we man the Bring and Buy stall at our annual rally.... But as I said I'm included so also part of the picture too,  so glass houses and stones springs to mind!   



In all seriousness there does seem to be a few distinct types of character to be found. At our local rally (a 'rally' is a kind of radio related junky jumble sale that we and several other clubs around the country organise, usually to raise club funds)  some of the sights to be seen are a joy to behold:  The guy who has long silver hair right down his back, wears shorts in all weathers, even one year in the snow, and is always accompanied by a small Jack Russell. Then there is the smelly guy from Oldham who reeks of urine and usually has several snotty children and a pushchair in tow. We also have 'Wiggy' the chap from Bury who for years sported a horrendous and obvious black wig to allegedly hide his bald spot. From Stockport we have Sherlock, the fellow who is so short sighted he uses a large magnifying glass to view any object on sale which he peruses in  great detail. He often has trouble finding the way out of the hall. There's the geeky types who are usually festooned with antennas sticking out of bags and pockets and have covert type earpieces sticking out and tangling with their copious ear hair. There's  the Raynet (Amateur Radio Emergency Network) brood who like to wear all  kinds of paramilitary uniform with the ubiquitous baseball cap trying to look important. Finally,  and the piece de resistance, is the transvestite... A big chap who is so obviously a man but has the courage to walk around strutting his stuff usually in fish nets and high heels.... You have to admire his guile! 


All of them have their part to play  and although I can joke about them I would never deny them the right to be a part of our hobby. The only people I would hound out of the hobby are the ex-CB'ers , often new M3 or M6 callsign holders, who  haven't been taught correct operating procedures and who fall into 'CB speak' when on the air... Anyone asking another station what their 'personal' is  when they mean 'What's you name?' should be shot, strangled at birth, have their googlies torn off with a rusty knife, be stripped naked and beaten with a kipper.... and.. and... and......


Generally I find that many officianardos  of the hobby can be said to fall into some form of  special needs? Its a male thing too as the percentage of females in the hobby is pitifully low (they probably have more sensible things to do). Most of us start off in the hobby with greater or lesser degrees of knowledge about the finer points of electronic and radio station operating skill and techniques. That's how it should be. Most of us progress to become efficient and confident in making the most out of our hobby and keep and uphold the required standards. In due course we  leave the area of special need  I'm alluding to above...At least to some extent!  Unfortunately some also remain in the weirdo category either overtly or covertly depending on the degree of knowledge and skill absorbed... I suppose I'm saying that some of us never develop or have the brain power to develop beyond the magically mystical stage we discover at the beginning of our journey into the hobby. The hangers on, left behind by the rest of us, still turn up at rallies all over the country because they want to belong to a hobby that purports to be technical and hence reflects, by association, that they must be brainy and bright enough  to understand it... Hence we have a fraternity, the 'Bluffers',  at one end of the hobby who might know some of the words but can't remember the tune! 


I hope I haven't offended anyone with these sentiments but as I said earlier...People in glass houses can't throw stones or have black pots or kettles!!!  Maybe we are all Bluffers to greater or lesser extent? Its how good you are at covering things up that separates the men from the boys! 

The Dawn of the Crystal Set...

Dad had been brought up by Granny French in No 42 Hartopp Road in Alum Rock in Birmingham for the majority of his early life, right up to when he left to do his National Service, where he met Mum. I'd always been under the impression that Granny French was called 'French'  because her first husband was called Dupont, information gleaned from her Marriage Certificate and who was, actually, a French citizen. . I'd also pondered at the back of my mind why it was that a Mr Dupont, him being French, had served in the military on the Royal Yacht as a Royal Marine?? Surely that couldn't be correct? On thorough searching of the old family papers I have  been able to piece together the real story. 


Poor old Mr Dupont died very early on in their relationship leaving Granny French, my Granddad Shaw's sister, a widow some time after the First World War.  At this point wouldn't it be great to reveal a wonderful love story of a young English girl going to France to tend the wounded and returning home married to a dashing French soldier? Yes it would, and it could even be true... The facts are however that there is no evidence to support this story and nobody left alive who could shed any light on their relationship. What a shame!


The real story is that Granny French actually married a Mr French... that was his surname.. and it was he that served as a marine on board the  HMY Victoria and Albert  III,  the Royal Yacht during the 1920's.  The photo posted today shows Granddad French in his Navy Police uniform  a role he undertook during his final naval years having been a career sailor since leaving school.  He is certainly a person I wish I could have a conversation with today about his life and times which potentially must  have been so rich...


What I can remember is the unfortunate end of Granddad French. He left this world as an alcoholic with cause of death as 'Cirrhosis of the Liver'  on his death certificate.  This reveals the nasty side of life in Hartopp Road during the time Dad was being raised and goes some way to explain why he didn't like me going up the road to frequent The Country Girl pub.


Granddad French had spent most of his naval pension in the pub and all my Dad's life the cloud of alcoholism was always hanging over his  thoughts.   I never ever saw my Dad drunk.. I don't think he ever was!  He just wasn't a drinker and frowned upon anyone who did. He had even taken 'The Pledge'  ordained by the catholic church for those who wanted to earn  'indulgences'  to be cashed in later, once you entered the afterlife , as a quicker route into heaven. Nonsense, yes, but in those times and with Dad's experience of the demon drink, I can see why he supported the cause.


Hartopp Road was a typical small terraced street in the real heart of Birmingham. If you wanted to, and I often did, you could walk into Town, Brum's city centre, in half an hour or so. Otherwise it was a cheap bus ride on the No 14 or 55.  I used to regularly walk to St Andrew's, the home of Birmingham City FC which was only ten minutes up the road to watch the matches and get players autographs. I'd often get in for free over the fence or in through the main gate once the game had started and the turnstiles were vacated. No 42 was near enough to hear the baying of the crowd on match days but not quite near enough to demand protection money off supporters parking their cars to go into the match.


We never had a bathroom till the summer of 1968, or piped hot water, and the loo was outside in the yard. Bath night was Friday night in an old tin bath which hung for storage in the outside loo. That loo had a cast iron 'ROBORO' cistern that took a hefty pull and a bit of a knack to yank on the chain to flush it . Mum would use the twin tub washer to heat the water and which we all used to share, with 'hot sups' from the kettle to warm things up as each of us vacated the tub in turn. I can remember a story from one beach day holiday in Bray when I remarked to mum that the sea was a bit cold and maybe a hot sup from the kettle would warm it up a bit? I was only young... I'm sure it would have worked?


One remarkable thing about No 42 was the long thin strip of a garden which was to serve well as the route for a substantial long wire aerial for my early crystal sets. On Corporation Street in the centre of Brum there used to be a radio shop. I can't remember its name exactly but I have a hunch it was called 'Lasky's'. I can remember walking into town, a good three miles, to buy a diode for my first crystal set. I can also remember walking from home to Hay Mills, almost half way to the Airport at Elmdon, to visit an army surplus store in the quest for some high impedance headphones. I got them and they were of the sort used by tank crew with a fabric and wire contraption to enable them to be worn under a steel helmet. The rubberised phones were excellent!


As a side, I used to visit that army surplus store often and can remember now a whole wall full of R1155's. I wonder where they all are now? Amongst my purchases were things like air raid warden rattles (for the match) ex army torches (for reading under the bedclothes...once I could read that was!) gas mask (for stink bomb making)  a khaki knapsack (to hold my school books and sarnies) a felt covered water bottle (for long thirsty days when we had warm summers) and even an old mine detector complete with battery case (to search for shrapnel at the local bomb sites).  The end of Hartopp Road had been vapourised due to a stray stick of bombs which had fallen during the war. You could map the path and fall of the stick over quite a long linear distance. The craters and mayhem started up the road by the Parkfield Rolling Mills Factory, smashed through the end of Hartopp Road, on to Couchman Road and finishing up on Bowyer Road. The crater left in Couchman Road remained for years, well into the 1960's, and was always a magnet for kids, including me, as the large hole filled with water from time to time and was a great place to swim! There were a couple of wrecked cars too and the small crystals of toughened windscreen glass often served as diamonds in elaborate games of derring do. Health and Safety of today would have had the vapours... In my teens a large posh house was built on the site, the best in the area by miles, and this was the new vicarage proving perhaps that in such a depressed area even the Church of England had to have its presence felt and lorded station in the community upheld.  


The first crystal set I built, I must have been around 11 or 12, and was taken from pictures I found an old encyclopaedia which some how arrived in our house. Using just the circuit diagram and what must have been the sparsest of information (that I could understand anyway!) I put together a Heath Robinson  contraption made of a wooden base board and toilet roll holder coil former and  which included using enamelled copper wire carefully unwound from an old transformer as the basis of the long wire aerial. This projected out of my back bedroom window and down to the fence at the bottom of the garden. A sloper, although at the time I didn't know it would have been so called.  As the house had a nice lead pipe cold water supply,  the earth was pretty sound too. Having been brought up drinking water from lead pipes I reckon I  have survived despite current fears about lead poisoning!  


I soldiered on with a variety of circuits and experiments often spending hours and hours just trying to grab a signal and make some sense of it. Sadly I have to remark that Dad never helped me and Mum often got so exasperated with the clutter in my bedroom, or worse in the small living room,  that my overriding memory is one of me being a bit of a geeky nerdy nuisance (although those words hadn't been invented in the 1960's... 'Boffin' maybe??)  I probably haven't changed much!! From crystal sets came TRF's and later a superhet... But that was much much later! 


Amidst the crackles and buzzes of static I first heard far and distant voices from aircraft making their slow mainly piston engined progress towards exotic destinations such as Gander, Santa Maria and New York.  I heard the weather broadcasts informing me of ice conditions in the St Lawrence Seaway... I heard trawler men swearing at each other... I heard the nutty guy who liked to sing about drinking tea from Hilversum... I hear Radio Moscow, The Voice of America and AFN..... All broadcast in AM in those days, even the aircraft transmissions!


I was hooked, not only by catching those radio waves but also the aircraft, the places I heard and the information I could hear. It was as if I was travelling and visiting those places.... Being there without going there.  I can honestly say that the combination of radio and plane spotting was what set me off on a long and happy association with all things technical and probably kept me out of a great deal of trouble throughout my teenage years. I'm sure others will agree, once you can hear something exotic and exciting amidst the mush and whizzes of short waves, the quest then becomes How can I improve this? How can I make reception clearer?  I had to improve things. So I bought my first copy of Practical Wireless.......


But that is another story, especially as it must have been quite a few years and much sweat and toil before I could really get to understand what on the dickens most of it was it was trying to teach me!